Television Is A Powerful Tool–It Is Being Used Skillfully By The Political Left

Yesterday Real Clear Politics posted an article alerting its readers to the indoctrination in the coming television season. Entertainment  is going political.

The article reports:

Last week, the Biden administration promised gun control groups that it will soon roll out a massive push for limits on firearm purchases and other measures. President Biden reiterated that promise on Sunday. And the television networks aren’t waiting to lay the groundwork for this effort.

CBS is in a full-court press for gun control on its evening entertainment television shows. The bad guys are always white supremacists who use machine guns — supposedly AR-15s — to commit mass public shootings. Criminals in Mexico supposedly get machine guns from the United States. A father’s desire to protect his family only leads to tragedy when his daughter gets into the gun safe and uses the weapon in a mass public shooting. And guns in the home pose a danger for children. Gun registration is necessary for solving crime.

Does anyone actually believe that criminals will register their guns?

The article also notes:

NBC isn’t to be left out, showing a woman who tried but failed to use a gun to protect herself. Instead, her gun was taken from her and used to kill a police officer. The lesson is that owning a gun will only bring you grief.

And that’s just in the first six weeks of the year. Every show gives an inaccurate impression about firearms, thereby helping in this push for gun restrictions.

…“Magnum PI” has an episode where a 12-year-old steals his father’s gun from a bedside table and accidentally shoots his 10-year-old brother. The message is that parents should be afraid of having guns in the home. But, in 2019, there were 37 accidental gun deaths among children under 11 years of age in the entire country. Most of those deaths involve shots fired by adult males, typically in their mid- to late-20s, who also have criminal records and are very likely to be drug addicts or alcoholics. With 43.8 million children under 11, the probability of a young child getting ahold of a gun and accidentally shooting another child is incredibly small. 

The article concludes:

The lessons from these entertainment shows are clear. Don’t try to use a gun for protection, and it’s better to not even think of owning one. Also, the biggest danger in present-day America is white racists with machine guns. Gun control advocates know Americans won’t accept more gun control if given accurate information. It is bad enough that news programs provide only one side of this debate. But when Americans just want to be entertained, they still can’t escape lies about gun ownership.

A friend once remarked to me that everything you see on television is there for a reason. At the time I thought he was paranoid. Now I think he may have been right.

Some Wise Words From Walter Williams

On Saturday, Breitbart posted an article quoting Walter Williams on the new gun registration measures being instituted in Virginia. Walter Williams is a columnist and a George Mason economics Professor.

The article reports:

On December 10, 2019, Breitbart News reported that Northam changed his position from supporting an across-the-board ban on possession of such weapons to supporting a ban only in a situation where a person refuses to register the firearm with the government. The Virginia Mercury quoted Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky saying, “The governor’s assault weapons ban will include a grandfather clause for individuals who already own assault weapons, with the requirement they register their weapons before the end of a designated grace period.”

On December 27, 2019, Walter E. Williams used a Fox News op-ed to warn Virginians “not to fall for the registration trick.” He said, “Knowing who owns what weapons is the first step to confiscation.”

In the article, Walter Williams quoted James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 46:

James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 46 wrote that the Constitution preserves “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”

Too many Americans believe the Second Amendment grants Americans the right to own firearms only to go hunting and for self-protection. The framers of our Constitution had no such intent in mind.

The article concludes:

Eighty-six of Virginia’s 95 counties have declared themselves Second Amendment Sanctuaries in which future gun controls passed by Northam and his Democrat colleagues will not be enforced.

Stay tuned.

Quietly Infringing On The Second Amendment

Historically, one of the first steps in gun confiscation is the registration of all privately-owned firearms. That step makes it very simple for authorities to quickly go to the homes where firearms are owned and take them away. Gun registration in America has not met with a lot of success, so those who would like to ignore the Second Amendment are looking for alternative ways to determine which households own guns.

ObamaCare included a section that stated:

(2) Limitation on data collection

None of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or an amendment made by that Act shall be construed to authorize or may be used for the collection of any information relating to-

(A) the lawful ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition;

(B) the lawful use of a firearm or ammunition; or

(C) the lawful storage of a firearm or ammunition.

On November 4, 2015, U. S. House of Representatives Representative Michael M. Honda, a Democrat from California, introduced H.R. 3926 To amend the Public Service Act to provide for better understanding of the epidemic of gun violence, and for other purposes.

The bill includes the following section:

SEC. 4. Protecting confidential doctor-patient relationship.

Section 2717(c) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300gg–17(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

“(6) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Notwithstanding the previous provisions of this subsection, none of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an amendment made by that Act, or this subsection shall be construed to prohibit a physician or other health care provider from—

“(A) asking a patient about the ownership, possession, use, or storage of a firearm or ammunition in the home of such patient;

“(B) speaking to a patient about gun safety; or

“(C) reporting to the authorities a patient’s threat of violence.”.

As of the writing of this article, the bill has 36 co-sponsors–all Democrats.

On Friday, a website called guns.com reported:

Federal research of gun violence as a health care issue had been largely defunded for 17 years until President Obama’s January 2013 executive order partially restored it. This order lead to the National Institutes of Health publicly requesting research projects on the topic for funding consideration.

The CDC peeked into gun violence as part of a White House by executive order following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, but its results were surprising to gun control advocates. The final study found that defensive gun use was common, while mass shootings were not. It was also discovered that when guns are used in self-defense the victims consistently have lower injury rates than those who are unarmed, even compared with those who used other forms of self-defense.

Taking guns away from innocent people does not make anyone safer. It amazes me that this seemingly rather obvious concept seems to be beyond the reach of many of our leaders.